Solstice in Times Square 2009 is coming up on Sunday, June 21st! We’ll hope you’’ll join us as we search for peace and tranquility in the midst of the urban energy of the world’s most frenetic place.

Pre-registration is now open for the yoga sessions, to be held on the newly-revitalized Duffy Square at the intersection of Broadway and 7th Avenue at 46th Street. The first 1,500 participants will receive gift bags including yoga mats courtesy of Rachel’s Wickedly Delicious.

If you would like to pre-register or learn more information, please visit

http://timessquarenyc.org/about_us/events_solstice.html.

Thanks and namaste!

nyc’s only all-girls public school!

Kids Yoga from sarah nyc on Vimeo.

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thanking him

this is not the poem i meant to write.
i meant to write a love poem
a poem of light
but i am here in darkness with you, the million watts of manhattan strung outside our window, across the water
the river seems broad
brooklyn seems quiet
and lonely
with you, here, in the other room-

i meant to write a love poem
in permanant marker
on billboards and across our walls
i meant to write love
across the sky with a silver airplane
hijack all the times square tickers
with love pixels
and my captured moving heart

/(our love seemed as bright and big as you, new york)/

how to get the light back
once its turned off?
how to get a heart back?
once its gone
disappeared under dark water
or silences?

i am writing a poem of the empty spaces between lights
where things seem dark or hollow

i am writing a poem of this year
when i waded through the wide river
black with water
alone
up to my neck

i never screamed or splashed
just fell to pieces and
floated to the bottom

where other things grow
mysterious as seaweed

deep as skyscrapers upside down
drilling into sediment

drilling deeper than i’ve ever gone
/turned inside-out/

i am writing a poem of what grows
through the cracks
of what love becomes when its turned
inside out

where

unexpected, home/ (unexpected things grow)
grows like seaweed
between the cracks of a broken and pulpy heart

alone, like seaweed at the bottom/home

(i am writing a poem of what is at the bottom of the river
when eyes adjust and how much you need to lose
to find what you need to find
i am writing a love poem
and you’re not even in it

(how much do you need to lose?
well, how much do you need to find?)

i did find the love of my life this year, just not where i expected it. now everything seems a barge against it here.
///like the love, this year
unexpected
growing between the cracks
of a broken and pulpy opened heart///
pulpy heart
and this last year
i waded through
stillborn
never screamed
just fell to pieces

is born
a poem of being lost and dark the empty spaces between lights that seem to swallow

///

i just ran around the park so much i lost count. ny hasn’t chewed me up and spit me out yet, but i’m feeling severally gnawed on. i came in skinny at 18 and filled out, and feel skinny again, the life sucked out of my cheeks and my inner thighs, the hard pound of pavement, the loop de loop of trees, branches brushing out my insides till my mind is as wide as the night sky over the park where there are no city window lights and even a few stars.
///

thompkins square park

its a nightime run for a day that chewed on my bones
and spit them out here,
in thompkins square-
branches brushing out my insides until my mind is as wide as the sky over the park
where there are no city windows or even stars

maybe i will leave,
//maybe i will leave tomorrow, //
get on something with wheels
or wings
//i’m not scared im not scared,
i just haven’t been honest //

i (the day) cannot be contained so i run
/laps forming a deep grove in gray pavement/
i want to stride through
feriousous and fast
around the manicured park, something wild
until it is finished
and home

///
what i came here
to do
is be wild and free
but there are blocks to run around and not
wide open acres
people in suits with
manicured words
and my mind
on a loop
around grassy things
making ruts daily
around
the new possibilities of things
to do-

///

i did find the love of my life this year, just not where i expected it. now everything seems a barge against it here.

pulpy heart
and this last year
i waded through
stillborn
never screamed
just fell to pieces

is born
///
if i run maybe i will keep from crying
i cannot be contained so i run
i run because the city is ridiculous and i want to sidestep it
i run because i want to remind pedestrians what feocity is, velocity
its done it just ended i finished it doesn’t have to be so sad i just finished
what i had to do
here

or, as the graffiti on west 4th street said, “trust your struggle”

Yield and overcome;
Bend and be straight;
Empty and be full;
Wear out and be new;
Have little and gain;
Have much and be confused.

Therefore the wise embrace the one
And set an example to all.
Not putting on a display,
They shine forth.
Not justifying themselves,
They are distinguished.
Not boasting,
They receive recognition.
Not bragging,
They never falter.
They do not quarrel,
So no one quarrels with them.
Therefore the ancients say, “Yield and overcome.”
Is that an empty saying?
Be really whole,
And all things will come to you.

why are you standing so close together
manhattan?
can’t anyone unplant themselves
pull up weedy legs and roots
and step across the river to wider land?
lay on your side, there
windows to the sky, there
not staring into the eyes of other buildings
with intensity

my love, you are wide open skies
your heart is too big to fit into elevators
always going up
or down

sometimes you want to go sideways
your ancestors arriving in motorcycle helmets and boots
from the outback the frontier the edge of things-

i dreamed you were burning in that ancesteral house
and i was holding the flint and the gasoline
i didn’t mean to
but neither did you
with your photograph eyes and long limbs leading back
generations
memories i don’t have
but that have me